170 MYSTICISM. [CHAP. IX.

Prof. luge himself describes ecstasy or vision as follows :—

" Ecstasy or vision begins when thought ceases, to our conscious-
ness, to proceed from ourselves. It differs from dreaming, because
the subject is awake. It differs from hallucination, because there
is no organic disturbance ; it is or claims to be a temporary enhance-
ment, not a partial disintegration of the mental faculties. Lastly,
it differs from practical inspiration, because the imagination is
passive."

PIotinus 2 is worth noting in this connection ; his description of
ecstatic condition is as follows :—

"It is a state in which you are your finite self no longer—in which
the Divine Essence is communicated to you. It is the liberation of
your mind from its finite anxieties. Like only can apprehend like.
When you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite.
In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its Divine essence,
you realise this Union, nay, this Identity."

Emerson, too, considers that an ecstatic vision is not a wild phan-
tasy. The seers who realise this condition have—
<( an access to the secrets and structure of nature by some higher
method than by experience, and what other knowledge is neces-
sary. . . By being assimilated to the Original Soul by whom and
after whom all things subsist, tlie soul of man does then really flow
into it."

And were it not for such. spiritual importance and intrinsic worth

of Mysticism, were it not for the high ethical ideal it invariably insists
on, were it not also for the fact, as acknowledged by Plato and a number
of other philosophers who came after him, that it is a source of the
blessings granted to man, it would have been impossible for
Christian mysticism to have had such 'a long and vigorous life' in Europe,
notwithstanding the incessant persecution to which it was subjected.
Even to this day, it is said, it is exercising its influence oa many a
man.

The experiences of the mystic were, at one time, considered to be
u pretensions, all Icarus-like flights towards forbidden
^ but the time, it seems, is not far distant, when such

lSw Max Miiller'8 < Theosophy/ p. 432.